Overheard a guy at the nursery telling his kid why leaves change color...

I was at a local nursery in Des Moines last Saturday picking up some mulch and this dad was explaining to his maybe 7 year old kid why leaves turn orange and red in the fall. He said something like "the tree stops feeding the leaf so it shows its real color underneath." I never really thought of it that way before. I always just thought it was the temperature or the sunlight doing something to the leaf itself. But the idea that the tree deliberately cuts off the nutrients and the leaf just shows what was always there kind of blew my mind. Made me wonder how many other things in nature work like that where we only see the surface layer. Has anyone else heard a offhand remark like that that completely changed how you see a common plant thing?

2 comments

2 Comments

nelson.cameron14d ago

Alright, I gotta push back on that a little. The tree isn't "deliberately" cutting off the leaf like it's mad at it. That's just a nice story we tell kids. What's really happening is the days get shorter and the chlorophyll breaks down because there's less sun, plain and simple. The yellow and orange were always there under the green, yeah, but it's not the tree making a choice. It's just chemistry shutting down for winter, same as my lawn mower when I forget to winterize it.

morgan_butler14d ago

My buddy overheard something similar at a park once. Some older guy told his grandson that mushrooms are just the fruit of a much bigger thing underground, like an apple on a tree. Blew my friend's mind, he still brings it up years later.